Isaiah Buchanan, (left), and Ahere Gillies have been on trial in the High Court at Napier, charged with the murder of Javon Aranui, inset. Photos / Ric Stevens, supplied
Isaiah Buchanan, (left), and Ahere Gillies have been on trial in the High Court at Napier, charged with the murder of Javon Aranui, inset. Photos / Ric Stevens, supplied
Ahere Gillies and Isaiah Buchanan have been found guilty of manslaughter following the death of Javon Aranui.
Aranui died from blunt force trauma to the head after getting into a fight with the pair.
Gillies and Buchanan will be sentenced in August.
Homicide victim Javon Aranui suffered 16 different head injuries when he was beaten up on a Hastings street early one morning in December 2023.
A jury has now decided that the assault - described by a 111 caller as a “bloody beating” - was not a case of murder.
Instead,Ahere Gillies and Isaiah Buchanan, the two men who faced a murder charge in the case, have each been found guilty of the lesser count of manslaughter.
Today, the jury returned the verdicts after almost three days of deliberation.
The assault in Jellicoe Street at around 3am on December 20, 2023, went on for some time.
Exactly how long was a point of contention at the trial, which has occupied the High Court at Napier before Justice Peter Churchman for almost two weeks.
Prosecutor Megan Mitchell, when she opened for the Crown, said the assault could have lasted as long as 15 minutes.
But as evidence piled up during the trial, it became clear that the assault was probably a lot shorter.
“This is a trial about how many times and how hard you can kick or punch someone in the head before you know you are risking their life,” Mitchell told the jury.
If the violence inflicted was difficult to visualise, Mitchell invited the jury to stare at a clock for just 10 seconds in silence.
Imagine someone getting kicked in the head for 10 seconds, she said, and then imagine it going on for longer. Minutes longer.
Isiah Buchanan, (left), and Ahere Gillies have been found guilty of manslaughter.
There was never any question that both Gillies and Buchanan had been involved in the altercation.
Gillies, 20, accepted that he was responsible for the manslaughter of the 24-year-old Hastings man, who was sometimes known by his tag-name of Snake, but he denied murdering him.
Buchanan also pleaded not guilty to murder, and did not accept that he could be found guilty of manslaughter either.
He said that the two accused never intended to seriously hurt Aranui, and that he had left the altercation at one point to secure his two dogs, which had got involved.
Aranui ‘threw the first punch’
Buchanan said Aranui – who was 30kg heavier than him – threw the first punch, and that he responded with kicks to the torso but not a punch in self-defence.
He said he tended to Aranui when he was knocked unconscious at the end of the fight, had placed his head on his duffle-bag “like a pillow”, and had helped the beaten man get up when he came to again.
He said the altercation ended in a handshake when Gillies returned to the scene, and the two men gave Aranui a bottle of water.
Pathologist Dr Katherine White had earlier described carrying out the post-mortem on Aranui and the multiple injuries on both sides of his head, including a “dangerous volume” of bleeding inside the skull.
Police on Jellicoe St, Hastings, at the scene of the altercation which led to Javon Aranui's death. Photo / NZME
There were also injuries – although mainly not visible on the surface – to Aranui’s torso, and his legs.
The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.
Despite the extent of his injuries, Aranui was able to get up after the altercation, which happened outside a known gang house.
Buchanan said he had a lifelong association with the Mongrel Mob.
Aranui even climbed back on the bicycle and rode a short distance. He was seen riding the bike by the police officers responding to the 111 call, and who arrived in Jellicoe St at about 3.20am.
Aranui fell off the bike in Collinge Road, just around the corner, but was still talking and walking unaided, although stumbling, when ambulance officers arrived to help him.
He also spoke to the police and ambulance staff, who noted his visible head injuries and his split lip.
They did not know at that time that Aranui was already beginning to succumb to his fatal injuries when he had the conversation.
He said he felt hot. He got out of the ambulance to urinate on the side of the road. He vomited. He told the first responders things that were not true about where he had been and how he got his injuries.
He appeared to be intoxicated, although the pathologist would later find he had no alcohol in his system at all.
Aranui was reluctant to be taken in the ambulance. He was worried about what might happen to his bike if it were left on the side of the street.
Javon Aranui, 24, was a tagger who sometimes went by his tag-name, Snake. Photo / Supplied
Obligingly, the police officers put the bicycle in the back of their car and said they would take it to Aranui’s home if the injured man agreed to go to hospital.
He went, but then things went downhill.
The ambulance stopped twice on the way to Hastings Hospital, 5.5km away, as the crew tried to stabilise Aranui’s rapidly deteriorating condition.
By the time they got to the hospital Emergency Department, about an hour after the beating, Aranui was on a breathing tube.
He was transferred to Wellington Hospital, where he died the following day.
Such was Aranui’s condition when he arrived at ED that hospital staff got back in touch with police, who quickly returned to Jellicoe St and the house where blood spots had been found on the pavement.
As the morning progressed, they cordoned off the property and asked the occupants – 17 people who lived in the house and associated sleepouts and a housebus – to come outside.
They knocked at the door of a cabin on the front of the property. When they got no response, they threatened to break the door down.
Inside were Buchanan, who was 18 at the time, and Gillies. Although a year or so older than Buchanan, Gillies is his nephew.
Police noticed Gillies was nervous and shaking slightly.
Both young men were questioned and DNA samples were taken, but they were not arrested immediately.
Both were to leave Hastings in the days after Aranui died, and police later found a social media post of Gillies in a rural location with his face covered and accompanied by the clip of a rap song entitled Murder Was the Case.
They also intercepted phone calls between the two in which they discussed a relative talking to officers, the DNA evidence, and the possibility of going to police to present Aranui’s death as manslaughter.
Gillies’ lawyer, Eric Forster, did not call his client to the witness stand or call evidence in his defence.
His position was that Gillies accepted that in the altercation with Aranui, he was involved in unlawful actions that caused death and so, he committed manslaughter.
But he said what separated manslaughter from murder in this case, was what was in Gillies’ mind at the time.
“It never crossed Ahere Gillies’ mind that his actions would cause Javon Aranui’s death,” Forster said.
Buchanan called to the stand
Buchanan was called to the stand by his counsel, Adam Holland, and said that the fight started after he and Gillies laughed at Aranui when they saw him cycling down the road being chased by a neighbourhood dog named Honey.
By that time, they had been reduced to 11 members – eight women and three men.
Gillies and Buchanan will be sentenced in August.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.
